On the Beach Of Regret
by triffickie
Summary: Crossover between the UK & the US series, Dawn meets Pam in Florida. JimxPam & TimxDawn.


**on the beach of regret**  
fandom: the office us/uk  
pairing(s): jim/pam + tim/dawn  
rating: pg  
disclaimer: I don't own the Office or its characters, Stephen Merchant & Ricky Gervais do.  
summary: Dawn meets Pam in Florida.  
spoilers: Not much for US, everything for UK.  
word count: 2,043  
notes: The setting is pre-US series and post-UK series, but before the UK Christmas Specials. I got bunnied and just had to write it. Hope you enjoy. Oh, and feel free to correct me on anything US-related, I have only seen most of S2, whereas with UK I've seen everything.

---

The beach bar is lovely, and the sand is warm beneath Dawn's sandals. The bartender compliments on her accent flirtily as she orders a drink, which makes her smile and Lee jealous, until he goes off with a mate of his who's on holiday in Florida.

"Bloke stuff," he tells her and she nods, thinking maybe it's nice to have some alone time.

"Don't have too much fun," she says and smiles a little. Lee doesn't smile back.

_Fuck you_, she thinks, but then she relaxes again, leaning back on her seat and thinks she might head over to the bar again. She misses talking to someone who talks back in more than three words. She never really liked Americans and their way of saying much and meaning so little, but it's better than saying little and meaning nothing.

Nothing at all. Like Lee does, often.

When she reaches the bar, she notices there's a girl talking to the bartender. Knocking back her drink quickly, Dawn thinks she'll order another one and then go back to her own table, maybe just stare at the ocean and think. She hasn't had much time to think about -- well, think at all, really.

"One margarita, please," she mumbles her order as she climbs on the bar stool and notes that the girl talking to the bartender is prettier than she is. Prettier and thinner. She even has better hair.

_Stop it_, Dawn thinks to herself. She puts herself down a lot these days. Then she rationalises and tries to feel good about herself again, which is never easy, even though she's not _fat_ and this is _America_, what's fat in the rest of the world is merely chubby in here. But she can't rid herself of this feeling that there are a lot of girls in Florida who they could be watching on telly at home in England and make Lee go, "I'd shag her." (She started that tradition, but still.)

The pretty girl looks at her and giggles in a very drunk sort of way, and then, as the bartender is fixing up Dawn's drink, she introduces herself.

"Hi, I'm Pam."

"Dawn," Dawn says awkwardly and shakes Pam's hand. She never gets that friendly herself when drunk. Of course, it's been a while she's been drunk. It's been a long while since she's had a night off at all. 

"Here you go," the bartender says as he slides her margarita towards her. Dawn reaches for her wallet but Pam waves her hand at her.

"Don't worry about it, Dawn, it's on me. I like you. And I got a new job. And I'm on holiday, right? It's on me."

"No, it's alright, I've--"

"Dawn! You came all the way from England. My country, my treat." Pam leans in closer and whispers, "I saw your fiancee leave. Mine's at a bachelor party right now. I think we might have more in common than you think."

Dawn blinks and has this odd feeling like maybe Pam, this very very drunk but also very generous girl, is right. Dawn smiles at her then, and gestures towards the table she shared with Lee before he left. Besides, she could use the company. Maybe Pam could, too.

"I'm not a tourist, actually," Dawn says as they sit down. "I, well, my fiancee's, Lee's that is, his sister lives here. We've been staying with her for a while now."

She doesn't want to mention the babysitting. She always tries to avoid telling people about it.

Fortunately Pam seems to be too drunk to care about the specifics. She rambles about her own life, the new job she got ("It's nothing amazing, quite boring actually, but you know, it pays."), her fiancee, and as they giggle at the coincidence of both of them being engaged to guys with one-syllable names, Dawn thinks that Pam is not like her at all, and yet she's exactly like her. They connect. It's strange. 

"So how's England?" Pam asks her.

"Miserable," Dawn says, thinking of gray days and gray people - but that's what you get when you choose to work at a paper company, she guesses. Good ol' Slough.

"No bright moments?" Pam swirls her ruby-red drink with a straw and Dawn stares at it.

"Some, maybe," she answers. Then, thinking of Tim, _again_, cursing that she always reminds herself of his memory, she goes to order another drink.

When Dawn returns, Pam is still staring at her own glass, less giddy and more thoughtful now. They sit in silence for a minute or so, and then Pam starts:

"There's this guy I work with."

Dawn looks up at her and takes a quick sip of the third margarita. "What about him?"

"It's not like.. Well, you know I have Roy like you have Lee so it's not like _that_, obviously, but we just, I don't know, get along so great." Pam glances up at Dawn and smiles. "You know, like Jim, that's his name, is the only reason I feel like I can actually work in that place longer than a month without going completely insane."

Dawn nods, silently, and then looks at her own glass. She has to be getting rather drunk right now, because there are no such things as cosmic connections. Parallel universes. _Christ_.

"It just makes you wonder." Pam gulps down the last of her drink. "Choices, if you made different choices. If you lead a different life, and what it could be like. Taking chances. Risks. God, that sounds so weird, I'm sorry. I must be really drunk right now."

"You're not the only one," Dawn responds and they laugh, and then become quiet again.

"This guy you work with," Dawn begins, and tries very hard not to think of Tim and what he must be doing now, "you don't love him, do you? Because you love Roy and you're just friends with Tim--"

"Jim," Pam corrects, and Dawn trails off after that.

"What I'm saying is that--" she starts again and then realises she doesn't know what she's saying. She's just talking to herself. Suddenly it's like she's back in Slough, looking over at Tim's desk, and telling herself why she's made the choices she did. Why she's sticking to them. _You love Lee_, repeating it like a mantra until it's self-evident, kind of not true anymore but what she still holds as the truth.

Pam is looking at her and Dawn shakes her head slightly, laughing. "Nevermind. I'm really drunk."

"Let's walk," Pam says, and they do.

"So, have you thought about your wedding?" Dawn asks as they walk to Pam's hotel.

"Oh, we're not that kind of engaged. It's not really been discussed. I don't know." Pam shrugs. "Would be nice though. Make it all final."

"Yeah," Dawn agrees, and yet doesn't. She shakes her head and wishes she hadn't drunk so much, and then wants to ask Pam about Jim, to make sure it's not like her and Tim, like there ever was a Dawn-and-Tim. Like there ever was.

She asks Pam about Jim, and gets exactly the kind of reaction she feared she'd get. A defensive one, with nervous laughter and unfinished sentences, as Pam trails off as if she's thinking about him and can't think about anything but him.

"But we're just friends, and who says members of opposite genders can't be friends, without any sexual tension or even a possibility of a crush or romance or I don't know what, I mean, we're just friends, I have Roy, is there more to it? No! Why should there be something to it?"

"Exactly," Dawn says quietly and thinks about the time Tim asked her, and she said no. She just said no. As if she didn't have a choice of saying 'yes'.

Before she knows it, she's crying and Pam is hugging her and saying things like "It's okay" and "Shhh" and "Whatever it was back in England, you have a new life now".

She doesn't. What Dawn has now is only a new non-life. With more sunshine weather and babies, less telephones and office supplies, but it's just the same. Exactly the same. Miserable.

"If you love Jim, you should leave Roy," Dawn says when she steps away from Pam's hug and wipes her tears and make-up on her palms. She almost adds, _Don't do what I did_, but she doesn't want to explain, talk about Tim.

And Pam just stares at her, the hotel glowing with light in the background, and then gestures towards it. "I should -- go, Roy might have checked back in by now."

"Oh, okay. Well, uhm, thanks for the company." Dawn smiles, and curses that she had to let out that ridiculous advice. It's probably not like her and Tim at all, this situation with Jim and Pam. And yet, when she looks at Pam standing there, she knows Roy isn't going to be there in their hotel-room. Roy's going to be late and Pam's going to fall asleep waiting for him, and before that she's going to be thinking about what Dawn said, and then decide Dawn's a drunken British airhead, who knows nothing. Denial goes a long way in life.

"Maybe we should exchange e-mails or something," Pam offers, but Dawn shakes her head.

"Sorry, no e-mail. And, well, Jackie, that's Lee's sister, she doesn't really like it when people call us through her phone." She smiles apologetically.

"Okay, well, I'll look you up once you two have moved out on your own. Your last name is..?" Pam goes through her purse and finds some pen and paper.

"Tinsley."

"And Lee's?"

Dawn just smiles. "Don't worry. We're not getting married anytime soon, either."

"Okay. Well. I'll ask the reception to call you a cab. I should go up to my room now, Roy--"

"Might be there, yeah, thanks."

"Here's my e-mail, just in case you get one at some point and want to get in touch." Pam slips Dawn a piece of paper.

They hug and depart, and Pam goes up to her room and watches Dawn get into the cab and drive off.

Pam eats a pack of salted peanuts from the minibar and stays awake until 1 AM, but Roy still isn't back. She thinks about Dawn's words, and decides Dawn was drunk and didn't know what she was saying, and how could she know and what _does_ she know, anyway, and Pam falls asleep thinking of Jim. She wakes up at 4 AM, thirsty, and finds Roy asleep next to her. She drinks water in the bathroom and washes her teeth, and decides it's an innocent little crush at the work place with someone she just happens to hit it off with rally well.

She goes back to bed and Roy snores a little, so she lies still and counts sheep and curses Dawn for messing up her brain like that with her drunken British so-called advice. Then Pam sighs and relaxes, and thinks of negatives. Not-Jim. So easy to think of Not-Jim instead of not thinking about Jim. (Not-Jim, however, tends to be a lot like Jim.)

In the morning she doesn't want to go through the logic again, or Dawn's advice, but still the day she returns to work, she tapes a piece of paper onto the side of her computer screen. _Tinsley_, it says.

---

Some time later, two years, three years maybe, Pam finds an e-mail in her inbox just before lunch from someone called Dawn Canterbury. She reads the e-mail, and then deletes it.

(She looks over at Jim's desk, watches him work for a moment, until turning back to her computer. She doesn't catch Jim looking back, staring at her for a moment, then another.)

After lunch she restores the message and reads it again, and smiles, and tries not to think of cosmic connections or parallel universes. Dawn got her Tim. Living together, considering marriage, the whole thing. It has nothing to do with Pam and Jim. Pam and Jim, she thinks. Like there ever was a Pam-and-Jim, like there ever will be.

Like there ever will be.

----

Author's Note: I was a bit worried over the characterizations as this is my first time writing both characters but I hope I got them right. Thanks for reading.


End file.
